Falkirk's dismal attempt at gagging the Lichtenstein mouse that roared, coupled with the night Sigma Olomouc punched the Northern Lights out in Aberdeen left me ashen-faced with worry about the season ahead.

At least, whatever happens now, Scottish football is guaranteed European football until Christmas, courtesy of - as usual - the Old Firm.

And it could get worse before it gets better.

If Scotland don't secure at least a point - and we probably need three - in next Wednesday's World Cup qualifier in Norway, then Scottish footballers can make next summer's plans; and they won't include South Africa.

Instead, they will involve the purchase of an HD television and stocking the fridge with some nice white wine from Stellenbosch.

Livingston are squealing like pigs about being parachuted into the Third Division.

I say parachuting, but they were booted out the aircraft without instructions about how to pull the ripcord.

But what did they expect? They have run their affairs with all the efficiency of say, a major bank, and you can understand the complaints of others who have tried to keep their financial affairs just so.

Now they want to hi-jack the big Scottish Football League kick-off; which smells to me of spoilt brat mentality.

There needs to be a little porridge-supping in West Lothian.

Meanwhile, Falkirk were bowing out of Europe against a team from a country the size of Castlemilk.

And the Dons weren't just Dandy: they were Beano, Beezer and every other comic you ever read too.

I watched Motherwell stumble to beat a team of chubby lads from Wales and then dismantle a side from Albania.

But in all honesty our charity team Dukla Pumpherston - a drinking team with a football problem - could have given them a game.

So, by the time I donned the working clothes again I was tormented about the whole state of affairs.

Then along came Celtic. And they made me believe again.

Tony Mowbray's tactics in Moscow were just what the doctor ordered, and he's already making his imprint on the squad Gordon Strachan left behind.

Danny Fox looks like a full-back who knows his trade and the manager caught midfielder Massimo Donati just in time.

The removal van was already on the road back to Italy.

There is still a gap which will take a bit of bridging yet between Celts and the Champions League - there are a few cracking teams who await them in the final qualifying round.

But hope springs eternal and at least there is the salvation of the Europa League.

Meanwhile, we have other prayers that need answering.

I had a 'something-in-the-air' feeling about Celtic in Moscow, but I fear there may not be an easterly wind strong enough to blow it onwards to Oslo on Wednesday.

A World Cup tie of this importance before a domestic ball has been kicked in the divisions where our players ply their trade is not good.

The absence of Craig Gordon is hardly a reason to be cheerful either.

And for the Tartan Army, only lottery winners and Fred Goodwin-esque earners will be able to afford the Norwegian price of alcoholic solace.

To be honest I would have hoped to have been cheerier in my first offering of the new term, and that may come next week as I ponder the forthcoming SPL title race.

But everywhere I look I hear alarm bells ringing and see doom hanging thick in the air.

Policing bills to rise and television contracts torn to confetti. How does that translate to reasons for a knees-up?

It's being so cheerful that keeps me going, you know...

Gordon Strachan had no chance of carrying on at Celtic the moment Rangers embraced the championship. He had already lost huge swathes of the club's support.

Two falls, a submission or a knock-out will do it every time.

In truth, he was a heartbeat from chucking it all in 12 months earlier amid the frenzy of clinching his third consecutive title.

By the time Celtic had slumped on to the Champions League floor on a winter's night in the Danish town of Aalborg, I suspect he was already regretting his decision not to head over the horizon in a blaze of summer glory.

I do not accept that the majority of Celtic fans wanted him removed, but in truth it was more than a tiny minority. He won them titles, but he never won their hearts. I'm not sure I will ever understand why.

Was it the comments about the Alsatian dogs and cans of Kestrel? Or was it because they didn't like the way he spoke to the media?

Maybe it was that, right enough, because the world knows we are precious wee souls and fans of the club have always been so kindly concerned about my welfare.

The wise old owl that is Walter Smith sussed him in the end but with the support of his club's fans he was entitled to the right to fight another day.

In the end, though, he just reckoned that it wasn't worth the hassle.

Of course there were blunders: the price tag on Adam Virgo, the wages of Thomas Gravesen, the decision not to start with Aiden McGeady in the most recent Old Firm match.

But he inherited the Bobo Balde situation which tied up wages of £30,000 a week and one hand behind his back.

There were confusing signals too from his man management. He massaged the Aiden McGeady strop brilliantly, but never seemed quite capable of giving Artur Boruc the necessary clip across the ear.

But I like him a lot. And his bark - Alsatian or otherwise - was always worse than his bite.

And I don't really comprehend the two fingers being flicked behind his back as he disappeared in the direction of a Spanish golf course.

The glint in your eye is the glare from six trophies being dragged in his wake.

For all that, life moves on as it always does. And as crazily as ever.

For Strachan read Calderwood. Jimmy would have been as nervous as an MP reading the Telegraph if he scanned Aberdeen fans' websites over the last couple of years, not that he ever did.

This was another exercise in the defying of logic. They gurgled with delight at Ebbe Skovdahl's pantomime performance as manager of the club, but Calderwood's achievement in taking them into Europe again wasn't good enough.

I suspect they might not realise what they had until long after he is gone.

And so the managerial merry-go-round spins out of control. I had a dream on Sunday night that two-thirds of the SPL clubs will have new men in charge for next season.

Sad, isn't it? Not the changes, but the fact that my dreams, once full of the most wonderful fantasies, have now been reduced to this.

But it could happen, which says much about the stability of our game.

Walter Smith won't leave, but he thought about it, Csaba Laslo is having much more trouble with the blessed Vladimir than most people know, Mark McGhee is being linked with more outfits than Twiggy and John Hughes seems constantly on the threshold of organising his farewell night-out.

Merry-go-round? It's a ghost train they're all on.

Hughes had talks with his board on Sunday and I can't sit here and predict that he will be in charge by this time next week, win or lose the cup final.

If they want to speak to his number two Brian Rice then they better find the dialling code for Magaluf. He is already five days late for his annual pilgrimage.

And that is where we should all be. Taking the waters, the beers and the wines, soaking up the sun and reflecting on another astonishing season which was far from Manchester United or Barcelona-esque but which ripped at the emotions in the good old-fashioned way.

In the short term, I'll see you at check-in. Come August I'll meet you at the far post.

And calm down. It's only a game.

Aye, right.

The championship lead has been tossed about like seagulls in a storm. But it's going to find a haven this Sunday one way or another.

You can't say that the football provided by the Scottish Premier League this season has been Barcelona-esque, but it has been a ripping yarn. Never mind the quality, feel the thrill.

Before a ball was kicked, I tipped Celtic to win it and Inverness to be relegated.

It says much for the roller-coasting unfolding of events that, right up to the last breath of the season, I could still be right, still be totally wrong.

It has to be advantage Rangers. But they have been here before and pushed the self-destruct button. Would you really put the mortgage on it being straightforward from here on in?

That helicopter could be buzzing about in the sky like a homing pigeon with a memory lapse this Sabbath afternoon.

But, when it comes home to roost at Tannadice or Celtic Park, there will be a manager somewhere reflecting on what he might have done differently.

Should Gordon Strachan really have left Aiden McGeady out of his team at Ibrox? Does Walter Smith have special glasses that make Andrius Velicka look like a striker?

And should Kyle Lafferty be allowed to accept a championship medal when an Oscar would be much more applicable? His antics against Aberdeen were scandalous. His haunting by opposition support could be enduring. It was a big mistake.

While he tries to rid himself of the shame, his team will try to embrace the title. It is theirs to throw away now all right.

If you had told their manager, owner and support on the flight home from the Kaunas catastrophe that they would have to beat Dundee United on the last day of the season to secure the title, they would have cuddled you like an auntie at Christmas.

It's still a tough shift. Too true it is. United can play and, in Morgaro Gomis, they have a midfield player who has already caught the appreciative eye of those who seek talent for clubs much bigger than his current employers.

But you might reflect with some justification that if Rangers blow it this time then they really don't deserve it in any case.

And what of Celtic? The trapeze swung back their way after Hibs drew with their rivals last week, but they couldn't launch themselves upon it. The getaway car left without them.

Anything could happen, it really could. What if they both lost? Two sets of fans looking like victims of a haunting. Ninety goalless minutes in two cities 70 miles apart, the emotions of the fans ripped raw.

It is a wonderful game. It grips you and tugs at your heartstrings, it brings you out in cold sweats and it is capable of lifting the weight of the world from your shoulders. There is not a sport in the world that runs it close.

Lives will be affected by what happens in Dundee and the East End of Glasgow and in Inverness and yes, still, Paisley this weekend as the relegation question is answered too.

So what happens next? Don't ask me. I'm away to do my Christmas shopping.

Although this is the mission even Superman might have body-swerved.

Until we can persuade Clark Kent to take a wee look at our dilemma we have turned to the former First Minister to launch his response to the game's SOS - Save Our Soccer.

We know what the prognosis is. Ailing attendances, television revenue in freefall, clubs walking in the shadow of the Grim Reaper, no pyramid system, no winter break and three bodies who couldn't work hand in hand with the help of soft music and a romantic table in the corner of the restaurant.

And that is why he is dancing on quicksand from the start.

Hired by the SFA, he can hardly recommend that his paymasters take a bullet or that at worst they amalgamate with the SPL and the SFL, fire a few clerks and blazers and form a Scottish Football Federation.

And then there is the curious world of the Juniors who are treated like another sport altogether. If football is the bread and butter activity of the Scottish working man and woman then it is ridiculously thinly sliced.

In 1967 when Third Lanark died of shame in the murkiest of circumstances it seemed inconceivable that a famous old name could pass on.

But now they are taken with alarming frequency. Clydebank and Airdrie and Gretna have gone. Clyde and Stranraer are in God's waiting room. And the Good Lord himself only knows what is happening at Livingston.

Kilmarnock are bleating about the potential abyss from which they may never again emerge if their fate is relegation.

You have, Henry, if you don't mind me saying so, a fair wee job on your hands here.

McLeish made a point of distancing himself from the dreaded phrase 'Think Tank', since the concept has a chequered history in Scottish football.

Former SFA secretary Ernie Walker formed one which included Rinus Michels and Tony Higgins among others. As tanks go it was about as popular as a Russian one on the streets of Prague.

I'm not quite sure they ever reported back, ever came up with a verdict. For all I know they might still be meeting up trying to find a solution to all the ills of the game, lost in their bunker, lost in another time.

The trouble is, you see, that we are not all singing from the same hymn sheet.

We need a pledge that we are all in this together, that stability is the by-word and that we can guarantee sponsors a period of longevity as a football family.

But every time the Old Firm hear the words English Premier League their ears prick up like a dog's when the doorbell goes.

It is an awful state of affairs although out of the gloom has come the beacon of a heart-thumping climax to the championship race and the aforementioned battle to plummet into the dark place that is the division below.

Something then to inspire Mr McLeish as he heads for the nearest phone box.

Good luck then, Henry. Just remember to throw your cloak over your shoulder and wear your underpants outside your trousers.

Let's not mince words. It's winner takes all. The balance of power could swing in a heartbeat.

I still think Celtic will win the championship, not because I said so before a ball was kicked and I'm not for u-turning, but because they embrace a single, precious point of advantage.

Strachan and Rangers counterpart Walter Smith have spent the season insisting that both would drop points left, right and centre and you cannot deny the accuracy of their forecasts.

Furthermore, if ever, in this last 20 years or so, there was chance to rip up their game of Monopoly, then it might have been the winter just gone.

But in the days that are left in this tortured season, Saturday's victors will not stumble again. Three games will remain and if the defending champions win at Ibrox they can even afford to lose another fixture.

This is the Spaghetti Junction of crossroads for them both.

A year ago, Rangers were getting ready for the Uefa Cup final and yet three months later they had been removed from the following season's European competitions by a team from Lithuania.

That immediately - because Ibrox fans suffer from short-term memory - had Walter Smith stooping like Atlas with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

If he wins the next four matches he will have dealt with the situation like a seal with a beach ball.

The club's owner denies they are in financial meltdown, but it would be wrong to suggest the bank hasn't turned up the heat on the toaster. And therefore the guaranteed Champions' League place that the title would bring would take them to the Pearly Gates of football Valhalla.

In many ways this has been a season of dross. Balls battered black and blue by footballers who couldn't make a pass through the Arc De Triomphe without hitting a wall.

And you can't put footballers on a surface like Fir Park and expect them to paint pretty pictures. All you get is football graffiti.

Barcelona have the look of a once-in-a-lifetime team about them, so it would hardly be fair to compare the SPL's finest but I do sometimes wonder if I am watching a different sport.

And yet for all that, the Old Firm could possibly do what we asked, namely take it to the last seconds of the last minute of the last hour of the season. And so we should really be grateful for small mercies.

Except if Celtic win on Saturday even that small thrill will be denied us.

And here is the answer. No, not in a month of Sundays. Nor Wednesday nights, for that matter.

Why has the SFA decided to take on a B international match at second prize level against Northern Ireland at Cumbernauld next week?

Expect a crowd of 14 men and a dog... although I understand the hound in question says the job of getting there will be no walk in the park.

Actually, I'm going to the game and I might take my boots because the batting order is likely to sink to such murky depths on the talent scale.

Anglo Scots are involved in play-off matches in the English Championship and managers of sides in the nerve-wracking bottom six won't want their stars involved ahead of crucial fixtures.

However, Gordon Strachan and Walter Smith are likely to say "good luck" to any players selected ahead of the title showdown Old Firm game.

Aye, right!

We are so short of candidates for this team that the SFA board might send out a grovelling apology to Barry Ferguson.

All right, maybe I've taken that too far. But this is a pointless exercise.

We will field a team full of players who have no chance of ever representing the country at a meaningful level on a night when the televised Champions League semi-final might just prove too much of a temptation.

No contest. It's like Baywatch versus Bayview.

And don't give me that codswallop about giving some players a chance to pull on a Scotland shirt.

Do what the rest of us do for five-a-sides and buy one at your local sports shop.

It's the latest dodgy decision in a long list of dodgy decisions headed up by the old chestnut of European qualification.

Falkirk will be in the Europa League no matter what happens on 30 May, because Rangers are heading for the Champions League.

Good luck to the Bairns. It's not their fault but there is something intrinsically wrong with the system when we reward failure.

The club's starting position will be handsomely rewarded if they actually beat the Ibrox side.

But if they are runners-up they enter Europe so early they will just about have time for a cup of tea and a biscuit at full-time at Hampden before playing their first qualifying tie.

But at least John Hughes proved to be the class act that sections of the support - those who called for his head in an ill-timed open letter - could never be.

In the very moment of his sweet triumph, within seconds of the full-time whistle against Dunfermline, he was dedicating Falkirk's arrival in the final to the memory of Craig Gowans who died four years ago in a tragic training ground accident, aged just 17.

It was a much needed moment of dignity and style because our little world has gone stark raving bonkers.

And the busiest asylum of all may be Almondvale.

What on earth is going on there? Answers on a postcard, please, to Paul Hegarty.

That West Lothian question suddenly makes the B game, relatively speaking, look like a right good idea.

The Old Firm are poised to attempt to tunnel out again but it will all end in tears, as grisly a mess as poor Steve McQueen on his motorbike.

It is a weary debate, but if they go they will have the blood of the Scottish professional game on their hands. Not that, I suspect, huge swathes of their support - blinded as they are with a love of Ireland and England and a loathing of the Tartan Army - will care.

Rangers and Celtic have been flaunting themselves to the English Premier League for some time now, like two old tarts promenading a beach in Blackpool or Benidorm.

But the truth is that they have had more knock-backs from the neighbours than Derek Riordan has had from bouncers in Edinburgh.

But I'll tell you this; the get-on-your-way-it-will-be-a-better-place-without-you brigade has no idea of how serious the situation really is.

Celtic and Rangers' departure to the south would leave the Scottish game with its throat cut... because in the real sense it is not a departure at all.

God isn't going to reach down from heaven and transport the pair of them to new homes in Milton Keynes and Chelmsford. They will still be right here soaking up the media attention and the television money.

And the game they left behind won't just be a backwater: it will be a puddle.

A more competitive championship, I'll grant you, but pub dominoes can be that.

I wish it were different. Too true I do. But too many have been brainwashed.

I attended a voting lunch this week to decide on the Clydesdale Bank manager, player and young player of the year and there were people sat round the table who clearly had a problem with a non-Old Firm player winning the award.

There is without a shadow of doubt an agenda in this country which warms to Celtic and Rangers. It is not a level playing field, it never has been.

The Old Firm got rich on reasons that had nothing to do with football and for decades the two of them milked the great divide.

The current custodians at Parkhead and Ibrox have done much to drag sections of their support kicking and screaming into the 21st century, but they still have a baggage about which our English friends may be gloriously naïve.

Here's the truth. It is not always joyous with the Old Firm about the place but life would be much worse without them.

Do we seriously believe that the clubs they left behind - with no television interest or newspaper coverage worth the description - would raise enough of the folding stuff to attract players capable of giving us the moments Rangers and Celtic have brought us in European competition?

It's Saturday. St Mirren are playing Kilmarnock. Eight miles up the road Rangers are at home to Manchester United while in London Celtic are visiting Chelsea. So the spotlight is where?

It's Buckingham Palace versus a Wendy House and there is not a media organisation worth its salt which won't recognise where the audience is.

John Boyle, who should be too busy planting grass seed to comment, nevertheless made a fair point when he said this is a bigger threat to Scottish football than Team GB for the London Olympics.

The Motherwell chairman is right. But if the Old Firm move and we give in to the Government about 2012 then everything that Scottish football has stood for in a century and more is flushed right down the pan.

It is murder and self-interest is the motive.

And I know on whose hands the blood will dry.

Yes, yes, yes I plead guilty to the crime of inconsistency. But this time my indecision is final.

It's the player of the year thing. A first it was Pedro Mendes and then it was maybe definitely Scott Brown, but now I just can't rule Andy Dorman out of the equation.

And, incidentally, are we really going to play Norway in August with a 30-goal striker still in the huff with the national manager? Is there no Henry Kissinger-esque diplomat out there?

Meanwhile, don't give me that you-can't-give-it-to-a-player-whose-club-haven't-won-anything argument.

That didn't compute for Alan Rough, Gordon Wallace and Andy Ritchie and it doesn't add up now.

And as for the manager of the season, give me a break. How can you vote now when the business end of the term has still to unfold.

Sure, Csaba Laszlo has a case... but what if Gus MacPherson or John Hughes keep his club in the SPL and win the Scottish Cup? What if Gordon Strachan or Walter Smith completes a domestic double?

It's all dreadfully confusing and I can't get to sleep at nights. No wonder I take a wee nightcap.

But at least we are on the edge of our seats, hooked if not exactly by the Barcelona-like quality of our game, but at least by the thrill of the every-kick-matters climax of the season.

Years ago I wouldn't have given you a double blank for the top six and the split, but I've been wooed. And wow-ed.

After the weekend there will be just one team lost in the no-man's land of seventh position where Hibs or Motherwell - for it is one of them - will have no chance of Europe and no chance of relegation.

Celtic or Rangers will be champions - but then we knew that as we lay on the beaches last summer.

Except at times their performances have been so fragile that Hearts are entitled to wonder what might have been had they just been a little more solid on occasions.

Never mind splitting the Old Firm, because given that there is just a point between them you couldn't do that without the help of a hammer and a chisel, how about the championship itself?

I put it to you that this might have been the season for the overtaking lane.

It's been an odd few months. Embarrassed in Europe, Rangers went out of two competitions in four months inclusive of a close season.

We were left to amuse ourselves in our own backyard before St Andrews Day, albeit Celtic had to go through the motion of final meaningless Champions' League fixture.

And for a while you might as well have looked to Fir Park for the green shoots of recovery. I watched some bad games in the deepest mid-winter.

But with the spring came hope. We had brilliant entertainment at Tynecastle on Saturday, and another thriller at St Mirren Park on Monday night.

And it's no coincidence. I put it to you, that the quality of the football grows with the grass.

Weather and pitch conditions are huge factors in the playing of our game. Summer football; trust me, it is the answer.

But that is a debate for another day.

For now there is the prospect of six weeks of indecision, no-one really sure of what happens next at the top, at the bottom - and for one week only - in the middle.

And that's good. Football shouldn't be predictable, it is sport and it should depend on the bounce of the ball and moments of precious inspiration. It's about blood, sweat and tears and it should rip at your emotions.

And believe me, for the fans of 11 SPL teams it will.

Meanwhile, if you follow Hibs or Motherwell, get yourself a good book.

It's going to be sheer hell for them if Scotland make South Africa.

It was meant to be one for the road at Cameron House. It turned into the end of the road. Oh, boys what have you done?

It started as a molehill and turned into a seething volcano.

Scottish football, the greatest soap opera in the sporting universe, has done it again. Walter Mitty couldn't have made it up.

Let's analyse this chronologically.

Several Scotland players start a drinking session on return from Holland, albeit around 4am when they splice the main brace. More morning than nightcap.

They make two big mistakes. They keep bevvying in the bar rather than the privacy of their rooms - and they get caught.

At this stage, it's an error of judgment by several of the squad, but it's the Ibrox pair who are hung out to dry - in not quite the required way - by the tabloid press. In fact, it turns into a witch hunt.

There is a sanctimonious, holier-than-thou savaging by self-appointed spokespersons of various backgrounds and the two players are left out of the team to face Iceland, having apologised to the manager.

In my opinion, George Burley arrived at the right compromise, albeit by a circuitous route. Why ostracise players who may yet have a role to play en-route to Cape Town?

But then came the V-sign madness. Not even a full blooded get-it-right-up-you job, but rather a wee camouflaged effort with fingers either side of the nose as if to suggest "honest, I was just scratching my cheek".

It was directed at the photographers - of course it was. But, in a heartbeat, the Tartan Army - many of them Rangers fans - took it as a personal slight. Well, they had already booed the players.

And don't tell me that is always right. They were bang out of order when they gave it tight to Gary McAllister - a marvellous player and servant to his country - who consequently quit playing for the dark blue jersey.

But, from that second, the booze brothers were adrift without a lifejacket.

It was a moment of utter lunacy by Ferguson and McGregor and at that point I resigned from their defence council.

Actually it was just about then that Walter Smith, who had telephoned the players and told them to apologise and keep their heads down, went off on one...and all hell broke loose.

But don't think it's just the players who have gone down for the last time.

While Rangers moved swiftly and decisively to take action against their own players, SFA president George Peat and his crew are adrift on a sea of confusion.

First, they say they want to draw a line under the affair and move on - that's Thursday afternoon - before Peat blows his top at the statement issued by his organisation.

Excuse me, but he's the president. Shouldn't he actually know what his organisation are doing?

And, if he wanted the players sent home, why didn't he do it himself when the story broke on Wednesday morning?

Like Ferguson and McGregor, the bungling SFA were all over the place, but at least the players had an excuse - they were mortal.

I am actually beginning to feel sorry for Burley, who, amid all this insanity, did salvage three points that keep us on course for Cape Town until the new season at least, and who now is being undermined by a president who appointed a chief executive and a manager to handle these very matters.

Meanwhile, the SFA ban the players but fail miserably to look in the mirror at their own miserable inefficiency.

Curious, is it not, that the association could not act efficiently when the players were on their watch but waited until they were returned to Walter Smith, who hesitated not a heartbeat.

What an embarrassing, unholy, undignified, shocking mess.

The demon drink has taken our game on the road hell.

This is a World Cup emergency but I suspect the collective talents of the police, the fire service, the ambulance crews, the coastguard and the SAS couldn't save us now.

It's not just second place we're looking for here: we have to ensure one of the other eight group runners-up has a worse tally than us and 14 points will be no guarantee.

At the moment there is no team in the silver medal slot with less than seven points, although in six-team sections they discount the results against the bottom side.

I'm sorry, chaps, but to extract ourselves from this quicksand we'll need the Full Monty of 12 points from four games starting right here, right now at Hampden.

You had better start praying that Iceland are as fragile as their financial infrastructure.

Anything but a win is unthinkable and, to be fair, we look capable of that, which at least would leave hope springing over the summer and into the new term.

Scotland actually played tig with a good performance at times in Holland although when the second goal went in with a full 45 minutes to come I thought we were trapped in the middle lane facing an oncoming Dutch juggernaut.

I'll forgive the team everything in Amsterdam because Holland are the real deal and potential winners of the tournament itself never mind our qualifying group.

But the atmosphere in the fabulous ArenA was a stark reminder that, despite the rise of the club game, the World Cup is the greatest sporting tournament on earth.

And 12 years is too long in its wilderness. Frankly, I have become sick and tired in the last two tournaments of being the nation that is the skint kid with his nose stuck to the sweetie shop window drooling in envy at the wonderment of it all.

The World Cup is for nations who like to party. And the publicans and restaurateurs and I daresay one or two other service providers in Amsterdam will testify to the talents of the Tartan Army in the R and R department.

There is huge responsibility now on the shoulders of the Scotland manager and his players to reach out a embrace a play-off spot, which in itself will unveil another huge obstacle.

It could be Russia or Croatia or France or Slovakia who await... but that is a headache for another day.

Courage, Scotland, do not stumble now.

Iceland, the upstarts who currently sit second in our group, must be swept aside - and with style.

Give us a reason to believe that we will sit at the game's great table next summer.

Three points now and the promise of more where that came from when the injuries heal and James McFadden and the rest are available. Surely that is not too much to ask?

And then when the ninth day of the ninth month in the ninth year comes to pass we will still be in the game.

Failing that, never mind the emergency services, has anyone got a number for the Samaritans?

Miracle-believers apart, is there anyone of the Caledonia persuasion out there who really believes we can bring home anything more than tulips from Amsterdam?

That would be blooming unbelievable.

The Dutch of class; Mark van Bommel of Bayern, Wesley Snejder and his Real Madrid pal Arjen Robben, Van Persie of the Arsenal and Dirk Kuyt and Ryan Babel of the club in the middle of an inferno, Liverpool.

We don't send footballers to clubs like that any more, apart of course from the occasional token gesture like Darren Fletcher.

I smell big trouble.

If Scotland win in the ArenA it will be the most exciting piece of Saturday night fever since John Travolta slipped into his white suit.

No, my friends, I have already designated the shift in Amsterdam as the sacrificial lamb to the World Cup gods.

The Netherlands will - not for the first time in history - have a big hand in the unfolding of life in South Africa.

The question is: can we hang on to their clogs?

It is from Wednesday onwards that we cannot afford to put a foot wrong.

Wins against Iceland and Macedonia at home, victory in Norway and very probably another win against the Dutch at Hampden or all will be lost.

That would leave us with 16 points where now we have four.

It is a dreadful state of affairs because, although in second place, we are actually - by three points - the worst of the current runners up, and remember that only one of the nine misses out.

As it stands, that will be us.

Of course Scotland are past masters in the art of glorious failure, but even by our standards this would be a belter.

I have not yet ruled it out.

But here's the truth: things are looking so bleak that glorious failure might be relative success.

Poor George Burley. The Scotland manager has been shunted up a siding this time, partly by fate, partly his own making.

He refused to select Kris Boyd on the basis that this club manager wasn't and that led to a wee domestic between the two.

But Craig Gordon is currently at Sunderland as popular as a pork chop at a Jewish wedding and the manager looks prepared to pick him.

Re-arrange into a well known phrase or saying: goalposts... the... moving.

In truth I don't care who he plays in goal because, match fitness or not, we are blessed with two special goalies in Gordon and Allan McGregor.

But does he gamble on Allan Hutton who will have played one reserve game in the wake of an injury which has sidelined him for the winter?

It is a hell of a gamble.

Frankly, I think the manager has to push the chance button.

Hutton is a rare thoroughbred in a squad with too many international journeymen.

Put the Spurs player in with Gary Caldwell, David Weir and Gary Naysmith in the back four, have a midfield of Darren Fletcher, Scott Brown and Barry Ferguson with Paul Hartley sitting and combine Kenny Miller and Steven Fletcher up front, with the two of them working a relief shift system in the midfield and we might be on to something.

Simmer quietly and slowly bring to the boil.

Oh yes, and give the captain a break, will you?

That human punchbag Barry Ferguson will have a big part to play.

I don't get it with the Rangers player, the fact that some seem to think he has morphed into an Aunt Sally stall.

That's a number six on his back, not a target.

Ferguson and his drive and passion and lust to exorcise the memory of his last appearance in the ArenA will be a huge presence for Scotland.

It has been open season for his firing squad but at Ibrox on Saturday I witnessed a player who wanted the ball, a player who was well on the road to becoming his old self.

We'll need all of that and plenty more this weekend in old Amsterdam.

They have Robben, if no Batman.

We'll need to play our Joker...

Don't get me wrong - a win's a win and I remember partying on Vimto till nightfall after I came second in the three-legged race, won - under suspicious circumstances - by a lad from the Isle of Man.

And so Celtic supporters were entitled to pop their corks in the wake of a victory over the team they most like to thrash.

You can call the Co-op the consolation cup if you like, but if Celtic now don't win the championship it will be no consolation at all.

They were thoroughly deserving winners on a Hampden surface which looked like had had just been hammered down with carpet tacks.

Frankly, I am becoming a little weary of horticultural talk in a football column - it is as if the game's tactics are unfolded in a potting shed.

But what are we scribes to do?

Fir Park looks like Macrahanish beach and now we are utterly incapable of laying a surface worthy of the name of the National Stadium.

Its sticky toffee pudding surface stopped talented players like Aiden McGeady running with the ball, although admittedly he did seem to get the hang of it by the time his pace left Kirk Broadfoot in reverse gear in the game's final throw of the dice.

Even Scott Brown - surely player of the year in waiting despite my earlier shout for Pedro Mendes - at first toiled to stay vertical on a surface which sprung like a bouncy castle.

Brown is now looking every inch the £4m high energy player that persuaded Celtic to burst the bank for him.

Even after 120 minutes of box-to-box action he was reaching pogo-stick heights in his jumps of celebration before the medal ceremony.

In any case the sight of the game's third most prized domestic bauble in the cabinet will surely be enough to lift Celtic on the home run.

Neither club is in great shakes in terms of the European game, but at SPL level Gordon Strachan's outfit seem to have more about them.

Incidentally, that scraping noise you hear is the sound of Strachan's critics digging for cover.

European failure will continue to haunt his season, but he was hardly a Scottish manager alone in that category.

Strachan has now won six trophies in four years at the club - with a seventh in view on the horizon - and if he does win that championship he will have out-performed Martin O'Neill, although I still insist that O'Neill's taking of the team to the Uefa Cup final was his greatest achievement of all.

But then Strachan isn't employed to out-perform Martin O'Neill - or even Jock Stein.

It's not history he is competing against, it's Walter Smith and other SPL bosses.

And in recent times he has bowed only to Gus MacPherson.

Football is a compromise sometimes.

Would Celtic fans have traded the Homecoming Scottish Cup defeat in the knowledge that it would guarantee a Co-op Cup win over Rangers? Probably.

Meanwhile, at Govan they stand at the this-could-be-heaven-this-could-be-hell crossroads.

A season which promised so much could deliver the square root of zilch.

Some crazy, wacky feeling deep within me said Aberdeen were going to win the Scottish Cup - so would someone please scrape the omelette off this column since Dunfermline beat them in a penalty shoot-out at Pittodrie?

And I have already declared my tipping of Celtic for the title.

And it is nearly nine months since they were booted out of Europe.

The natives would be restless if that scenario unfolded and I know exactly what event from their school sports they would want re-enacted.

The sack race...

Let us pray first of all that it is not a bloody Sunday: that the bigoted insane can stretch their pea-sized brains round the fact that this is a football match, not a re-enactment of Irish social history.

There are decent malt whiskies on sale which have aged more years than the IQ of some of these fruitcakes.

It was a stark reminder that Celtic and Rangers have a divine right to the square root of zilch.

For all that, I wouldn't miss the Co-operative Insurance Cup final at Hampden this Sabbath for all the coffee in Brazil.

The prize is merely the third-most valued bauble in the domestic game, but the pair of them seek something more precious than silverware. Redemption.

The rafters will shake if Celtic lose out on a second cup in eight days. And if that happens the whole house might come down if the championship itself then evaporates in the spring air.

But what of Rangers? Defeat could set their house of cards a-tremor, for although they have the possibility of a Hampden return they still face the task of lassoing Celtic in the title race.

And while - I will wager right now - neither Gordon Strachan nor Walter Smith will admit that victory on Sunday will be a factor in the championship, you sure as hell had better believe it will.

This, my friends, will be a belting afternoon, the latest instalment of a Scottish season which has been more Wacky Races than Formula One.

The track record in Europe proved it. We're manure and we know we are.

But that doesn't mean you can't have a lot of fun in your own backyard. Equality can equal excitement.

Rangers are the only team who can win the treble. That'll be the same Rangers who reached a UEFA Cup final while some petted lipped fans were painting up "we deserve better" banners.

As it happens, I don't think Rangers will win the lot. But they could and for sure nobody else can.

The thing is, I'm not sure which of the two of them needs a win on Sunday more. Or, for that matter, deserves it.

Both of them have weaved and stumbled through the season like a couple of drunks on the way home.

And if they forget to pick up the championship on the way up the road then there may be worse than a good lady with a rolling pin nursing her wrath to keep it warm waiting for them.

Messrs Strachan and Smith would sacrifice victory on Sunday right now - for all the wailing that would follow - if it guaranteed the championship itself. But, of course, it doesn't work that way.

So who's going to win? Search me! How can any student of the Scottish game who pledges neutrality - and I have seen most of both of their fixtures this season - possibly work that one out?

They have been as predictable as a shopping trolley with a dodgy wheel and at times just as sleek. But then, unlike players who ignore managers' instructions, shopping trolleys can retain messages.

Maybe, just maybe, events at St Mirren Park will have injected a new urgency into the champions that will drag them over the line.

But don't hold your breath waiting for a classic. This will be another result for excitement over quality.

For those of us who craved to play the beautiful game, Glasgow was anything but a dear green place.

The parkland culture of the second city of the Empire didn't seem to stretch to football pitches in the fifties, sixties and seventies and indeed beyond.

I either arrived home looking like a coal miner or the victim of mugging in which my assailant had taken a warped interest in my legs.

It was a version of child cruelty, actually.

And here is the real curiosity. In the few public parks where there were grass pitches, they used to dismantle the goalposts in the summer when kids were off school and the nights were light. It was the equivalent of melting ice rinks in the winter.

But worse was to come. Football pitches started to disappear altogether, covered up by motorways and supermarkets.

City planners, hailed as men of vision, couldn't actually see beyond the pound signs.

It was shameful and ripped at the heart of our national sport. And it was a scenario echoed throughout the land.

And trust me, more than any other single factor that is why the game is this country is toiling.

Tell a kid to put down the Xbox and go outside and play. And then try answering the next question. "Where?"

Football is being strangled at birth.

But is that a new dawn I see on the horizon?

I don't have much time for councils, councillors or politicians generally speaking, but I will doff my cap on this occasion to Glasgow City Council, the Scottish Government and others who have invested in Scotland's first regional football centre in Toryglen.

Once a desert of blaes, the land in the shadow of Hampden Park has been transformed, thanks to a £15.7m face lift.

The facility houses the country's only full size indoor synthetic grass pitch with seating for 700.

There are a further three outdoor plastic surfaces and one in good old natural grass. There is even a warm-up area for goalkeepers.

At long last someone has seen the light.

This country needs football as much as football needs its backing. It needs investment, not sound bites from politicians who keep talking until they think of something to say.

The Toryglen experience needs to be repeated again and again from the Shetlands to the Borders.

It is a thing of beauty, more spectacular than even Murray Park or Lennoxtown where the Old Firm inexplicably failed to build a full size indoor pitch. But it needs to breed.

The official opening, early next month, comes a little too late to trigger a production line to salvage our South African dream but one day it will pay dividends. One day a Scotland star will recall how he learned to kick a ball away from the howling gale and the stair-rod rain.

In Glasgow they still haven't given us back the pitches they took away. Nothing like it. They pillaged our land.

But at least this is a start

And for that I would get down on my knees and thank the dear Lord, except even after all these years they are a little tender. It was the blaes, you see.

It is a nervous wheeze you hear, deepened by the rapidly lengthening shadow from the Highlands.

Like a child scared of bogeymen, that will be the spectre of Inverness coming to terrorise the Bairns.

It was grim up north for most of the season. Craig Brewster's return was initially welcomed like that of the Prodigal Son. But, in the end, the supporters cast him out like an orphan in the storm.

Fans can be fickle, but this lot, it seems, had a point. And now, in territory where once they cursed a Butcher from England, they laud big Tel.

If he asked them to forgive the Duke of Cumberland and explained that Culloden Moor was just a wee misunderstanding by his countryman all these years ago, he might just get away with it.

Inverness Caledoninan Thistle were my pre-season forecast to be relegated. I just thought they had lost a little of their Highlands swagger.

Maybe privately, I was fed up staring at the rear end of caravans on the A9.

But, in any case, I saw little to the turn of year and beyond that suggested I had got it spectacularly wrong. And then Terry Butcher arrived.

Or, rather, Butcher and Maurice Malpas arrived.

Theirs is the opposites-attract kind of deal; Big Tel with his propensity to create work for joiners, given as he is to taking dressing-room doors off their hinges, Mo the quiet thinking man with the dry sense of humour.

One with the rousing sense of motivation: the other the shrewd tactician.

Together, they have breathed life into the relegation battle.

They have immersed themselves in the mission, although quite what this is doing for Butcher's attention to the Scotland cause as George Burley's assistant and his ability to watch players is another matter.

I am still ill at ease with that one. But that is to debate another day.

Meanwhile, in Falkirk, they are breathing uneasily.

There is a feeling there that they have been living above their means for some time and that they will have to take a scissors to the cloth they are cutting.

They are shopping in a different market place now and this summer, no matter what division they are in, there will be an exodus of players.

Boss John Hughes has openly admitted that he would mind a crack at a job in England and that hardly makes him a man alone among coaches in Scotland.

But it still added to the cracks in the enamel: you can't help feeling it's not the happiest household in the land.

Not that Falkirk are alone in Caley Thistle's sights. I suspect they smell blood elsewhere and the bottom six - which will embrace the two of them, St Mirren, Kilmarnock and two from Hamilton, Motherwell and Hibs - will be a hell of dogfight after the split.

In fact, here's the truth: I have not been enamoured by the quality of the game in Scotland this season.

The measure is our embarrassing assault in Europe.

It has not been sweet on the eye and the few moments of genuine pleasure have been glimpses of sunshine in darkened skies.

But its salvation is yet to come, a climax to a season that may go to its dying breath for the championship itself and, now, in that battle to beat the drop.

And, indeed, in the No Man's Land of the league's middle ground where the battle for Europe could be equally intense.

Good; if you're going to watch average stuff, at least make it competitively average. I think we may at least have achieved that.